


fallen trees

by shuofthewind



Series: Le Monde Solaire [6]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bilbo Left Some Things Out Of His Memoirs, F/F, Female Bilbo, Hair Brushing, Mirkwood, Pre-Relationship, The Ring Isn't Ever Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:51:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3463316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Blue stumbles into the wrong bedroom, passes out, and wakes up with an elf. In that order. </p><p>[<em>“You might have to pick me up,” says Blue, but she grabs the elf-maid’s hands anyway. They’re all-over calluses, her fingers very long and slender. Something lurches in her belly, and she can feel her ears pinking up. Oh, goodness. She might have an uncontrollable infatuation with a completely unsuitable and entirely oblivious dwarf, but she’s not blind. This elf is—well. She’s very lovely, that’s for certain. Quite beautiful indeed.</em>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	fallen trees

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand six days later than predicted....
> 
> I should just know better by now than to actually, you know, give a date for anything. Because I always miss it. 
> 
> Hopefully this wasn't ridiculous. Tauriel has turned out to be super easy to write some days, and super hard others. This one was one of the more difficult days. 
> 
> Do you guys want gold-sickness, Battle of the Five Armies, or shameless smut next?

Finding Kíli seems to start a chain reaction, and by the end of the week, she’s tracked down all the dwarves but Thorin.

 _Of course it's Thorin_ , she thinks. Thorin is the only one that eludes her because Thorin is the only one that's too blasted stubborn to be found. Confusticating dwarf. She'll cuff him 'round the ear when she does track him down, just see if she doesn't. 

Blue darts from cell to cell at the start of it, transmitting messages until Balin tells her off for it. “You’re our only hope of getting out of here in time, lass,” he says, and her heart plunges into her guts. “They can live without their messages for a few days. Have you been taking care of yourself?”

She nods, even though it’s a lie. She doesn’t sleep well with the ring on, but she’s too nervous to sleep with it off, so she wakes sobbing from dreams she can’t remember, and freezing, freezing cold. Every time she stops by Kíli’s cell he makes her wear his tunic again, but she’s managed to keep how icy she is from the others. At least, she thinks she has. They’ve started looking more worried when she stops by, started eyeing her face and her thin wrists as if they’re not sure what to make of her.

She doesn’t take much of their food, either. They only get one meal a day, and it’s barely enough for them as it is. Nori still looks terribly unsettled from the spider-bite, and even Bombur is starting to lose weight; she’ll not take their bread and meat from them. So she begs off, and steals when she can manage it. The only one who can get her to sit down for more than ten minutes at a time is Kíli, and that’s only because he holds her in place with one hand trapped in his.

She follows elves with trays, and elves with keys, and elves with knives who aren’t going anywhere in particular. She follows elves who whisper about dwarves and elves who are muttering about rude guests and elves who are just grumbling to themselves after leaving Thranduil’s chambers. She even follows the silvery-haired elf-prince for a while, one day, though he keeps nearly catching her. Still, she cannot find Thorin, and her guts are twisting into a tight knot at the knowledge of it. She has nightmares every time she closes her eyes, and if she’s not watched she wakes screaming, terrified, batting at the spiders in her hair. That part she’ll never put into her memoirs, she thinks. A magic ring is just that—it’s magic. It’s not supposed to frighten her. It’s not supposed to make her sob when no one else is around to see.

She thinks sometimes that there might be something wrong with the ring, but then it floats away, flotsam in a stormy sea.

One night—or morning—or afternoon—time is impossible here—she stumbles into a side chamber in what must be the guards’ wing and yanks the ring off, too tired, too cold, too _everything_ to do anything else. She holds it tight between her fingers, and for a single breathless moment, she feels almost free. Then she’s fading, drifting, the ring a circle of frost against her palm. When she opens her eyes again, there’s an elf leaning over her, and she’s so tired that she can’t even really be afraid.

Blue clears her throat, and says, “Are you going to kill me now or later? Because I’d rather see the dragon dead first.”

The elf leans back on her heels, and tilts her head just a little to the side. She reminds Blue of a fox—all hunting-lean and sharp-eyed and thoughtful. She looks Blue over again, her lips parting slightly, and then she says, “Later, I think, if at all. Are you well?”

“Not particularly.” Blue heaves herself up against the wall, fingering her ring in her pocket. Her heart is rabbiting in her chest like a mad thing, and she really ought to just put the thing on and vanish, but this elf is—she’s seen this one talking to Kíli sometimes, and trading a joke or two with Dwalin, and so she knows this one isn’t quite like the others. She’s never heard this one muttering under her breath about dirt-eaters. So instead of being sensible and putting on her magic ring and vanishing back into that grey world, she pulls her hand quite deliberately from her pocket and wraps her arms around her knees. “I didn’t mean to faint, if that’s what you mean.”

She’s fairly certain that’s what she’d done, considering she can’t actually remember lying down, let alone curling up on the floor. Blue can count on one hand the times she’s fainted in her life. Once after coming across a torn body in the Fell Winter, blood sprayed across the snow and half its limbs gone. Once when a baker’s dozen of dwarves offered to bring her along on an adventure into a dragon’s lair. And once now, after three days of barely eating and no sleep at all. Of course it’s the third time that’s really put her in a pickle.

The elf is beautiful, though. There’s a sort of curiosity, a sort of kindness in her face that the Elvenking and his son seem to lack. Something in Blue’s chest warms a little at the sight of it. Perhaps not all of the Mirkwood elves are completely inhospitable, after all.

“I do not believe anyone means to faint,” says the elf, and Blue blinks. Her eyes are sparkling, and the corner of her mouth lifts slightly.

“Are you joking?” Blue blurts, and then flushes red. “Sorry—I just—oh.”

“It was a jape, yes, if a poor one.” The elf considers her for another moment, and then claps her hands to her knees and gets to her feet. She offers both hands to Blue. “I would speak with you further, halfling, if I may. Can you stand?”

“You might have to pick me up,” says Blue, but she grabs the elf-maid’s hands anyway. They’re all-over calluses, her fingers very long and slender. Something lurches in her belly, and she can feel her ears pinking up. _Oh, goodness._ She might have an uncontrollable infatuation with a completely unsuitable and entirely oblivious dwarf, but she’s not blind. This elf is—well. She’s very lovely, that’s for certain. Quite beautiful indeed.

The elf lifts her to her feet without much trouble, and when Blue stumbles she catches her by the shoulders. The touch leaves a funny prickle in her skin, and she really ought to tell herself off for being so foolish—this is one of their captors, an enemy really, and certainly not a person to moon over and lust after like a fauntling—but she’s too tired to care at the moment. She only realizes once she’s sitting again that the elf has deposited her on the neatly made-up cot, and Blue blinks. “Oh.”

“Spider’s webs,” says the elf. She raises a hand. “Might I?”

“Do you have a mirror?” says Blue. The elf lifts one shoulder.

“I do not frequently use them.”

And yet she’s so effortlessly beautiful it makes Blue want to cry a little. “Oh.”

The elf hesitates. Then she peels off her bow and arrow, unbuckles the belt with her knives. Blue stares, and then nearly kicks herself. Of course this elf wouldn’t need her weapons close at hand to cut Blue into itty-bitty pieces. Blue can barely even hold Sting properly, let alone use it against a wood-elf that’s been training in arms for at least four of Blue’s lifetimes.

She wonders how old this she-elf is, and bites her tongue rather than ask.

“Would you wish the webs removed?” asks the elf. “There are many matted in the back, and without a mirror you will not be able to manage it yourself. I can assist, if you wish.”

Blue stares at her. “Why are you being so kind to me?”

The elf shrugs again. “I see no reason not to be.”

“But you know I must have come in with the dwarves.”

“Of course.”

“Then why—”

“Because you speak to me of dragons, and not of gold as I imagined.” The she-elf opens a drawer, and removes a delicate wooden comb carved with creeping vines. “The dwarves I have spoken to will not even go that far—none of them do—and I would hear more of your tale, if you would allow it. Until then, I see no one here other than a guest of my guardian’s household, and one who has been lacking in hospitality until this moment.”

Blue’s eyes burn. She blinks furiously, and breathes through her nose until she can get herself under control again. Then she tugs the braid Kíli wove behind her ear. “Yes,” she says. “I’d—I’d like not having spider-webs in my hair for any longer. If you please.”

The elf nods. Then she sits on the cot, beside Blue and just behind, and starts pulling pins from their places. Blue’s scalp aches as the frayed plaits fall free, and when the she-elf has undone it all (except for Kíli’s braid, which for some reason she leaves alone) she starts at the bottom and works her way up. She works quickly, at first, and then she smooths out, drawing the comb from scalp to tip in long luxurious strokes, until Blue is practically boneless. Which, she thinks muzzily, is probably a bad thing. _Possible enemy. Probably sneaky. Elves are sneaky. Wake up, you clot._

“I did not think that halflings were ones to leave the west,” says the elf eventually. She runs the comb through Blue’s hair a few more times, and then smacks the covers a few times to get the mud and grit off. All of it was in her _hair_ , Blue thinks, looking at the fairly impressive pile of leaves, crusted mud, twigs, spider-webs, and other things she’d really rather not think about. _That’s…fairly disgusting._ “Nor the sort to follow a company of restless dwarves.”

“ _Hobbits_ don’t, as a rule,” says Blue, blinking slowly. She’s very sleepy, all of a sudden. “I’m a bit odd, though. Everyone says so. I write romance novels instead of getting married and I sign up to—” _steal from dragons,_ she nearly says, and then she bites her tongue when she sees the she-elf’s eyes sharpen. “—to travel the world. They needed someone to round out the numbers, so they weren’t unlucky. Unlucky thirteen, you know. I help with—with that. And other things.”

The she-elf leans back, tilting her head again. Her lips are quirked again. “I see. And the fact that this particular company of traveling dwarves intends to break into the Lonely Mountain, and retrieve what has long since been lost—this had no impact upon your decision to join them?”

Blue makes herself smile. “Not in the slightest.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then the she-elf tips her head back and laughs, bright and strong. Her throat is very long and smooth. Blue flushes a little, and ducks her head to hide it. “You,” says the she-elf, “are a very poor liar, little dwarf-friend. It is not a bad thing,” she adds, before Blue can get offended. “It is—endearing, in a way.”

Blue blushes bright red this time, and tugs on her bangs. “You’re not very elfy, compared to the ones in Rivendell.”

The she-elf tosses her hair over her shoulder. “The Noldor call back to a different time, when the dark was not so tangled, and the nights did not last so long. We of the Greenwood have learned to take our pleasures where we can, lest the cursed world outside infringe upon our lives too soon.”

“Like the spiders,” Blue says, and the elf’s lips tighten.

“Yes. Like the spiders.”

 _Some sort of spawn of Ungoliant_ , Radagast had said, _or I’m not a wizard._ Blue is quite certain that Gandalf had never noticed her eavesdropping, because to this day she hasn’t mentioned it to him, and besides—she’s proven herself quite good at sneaking up on people. The elf twists her hands in her lap, and then sets her comb aside. It’s not quite possible for elves to scoot, but this one does whatever the elven equivalent of scooting is, until her back is pressed to the wall and she has her arms wrapped loosely around her knees.

“Speak to me of dragons, little dwarf-friend,” says the she-elf. “The leader of your company has turned his back upon my king’s offer of help, but I would know the full truth of what brings thirteen dwarves and a hobbit to Mirkwood’s glens. Tell me.”

And that isn’t anything other than a command. Blue crosses her legs, wrapping her hands around her ankles. The ring rests heavy in her pocket, alongside Kíli’s runestone. There are still flickers of grey at the edges of her vision. She shakes them off. “Well, I suppose—I suppose it started when I first met a Wizard, a very long time ago.”

She doesn’t tell the elf everything. How could she? She’d be breaking her contract, first of all, and secondly she’d be breaking the trust of the dwarves and she would never, ever do that, not if she can help it. So she amends it a little bit. It’s quite clear to anyone with a brain what Thorin and the others are up to, coming back here after all this time, so that she doesn’t touch, but she doesn’t exactly go out of her way to mention the Arkenstone, or the fact that she’s been brought along as not a companion but a burglar, or that they don’t really have any—plan, per se, to deal with the dragon, other than not wake him up at all. The she-elf sits and listens very carefully, almost never blinking, eyes fixed on Blue’s face. She twitches once when Blue mentions the orc pack, and again when she tells her of Beorn, but other than that, she says nothing at all.

Finally, when Blue finishes, she shifts. “You intend to—slay the dragon?”

Blue waffles a bit. “If we can, I suppose. Though there are only fourteen of us, plus the Wizard, but he’s—he’s off somewhere else. Shouldn’t Smaug be slain? He destroyed a kingdom—two kingdoms, if you count Dale, and I think someone _should_ count Dale because they’ve had it just as hard as the dwarves, truly—” she bites her lip before she can go off on a tangent. “The dragon of the Lonely Mountain has ruined two cities, and driven a number of people I care about a great deal to such desperate measures that they’ve found themselves in the dungeons of one of their most hated enemies. At least, if you listen to what Thorin has to say about it.”

The she-elf makes a face. “I did not think it well done, the denial of the Erebor dwarves. But I was less then than I am now, and even now I would not dare raise my voice against my king.”

“You seemed to do pretty well before,” Blue says, and then bites her tongue. The she-elf stiffens a bit. Her lips tighten.

“What do you speak of?”

“The—the spiders. I heard you reporting, I think, to His Highness. About the spiders and the fortress of Dol Guldur. Wasn’t that you? I’m—I’ve been very dizzy for a long time, I’m afraid, and I’m not good at faces even when I've had enough to eat.”

The elf-maid relaxes slowly, muscle by muscle. “It was. I do not feel that leaving the spiders to do their worst is the most—prudent course of action. But then again, I have not ruled. I am not built for it. My king has led our people to peace and plenty through this age and others, and I am certain he will do so again.”

“With a dragon on your doorstep?” Her heart’s pounding. She’s too hungry to think, too tired to second-guess herself. “What if the spiders are a symptom of something worse? What if Smaug being left untouched has called darker things back to the edges of the Greenwood? If we can defeat Smaug—”

“You are fourteen against a fire drake millennia old,” says the elf. “You do not stand a chance.”

“No, our size is our best advantage.” She thinks back to Fíli and Kíli teaching her joint-cuts, taps her fingers along the hilt of Sting. “He could destroy armies because they were there, because they were _obvious_ , but fourteen—he’d never see fourteen. We’d be too small for him to catch.”

“That dragon has had decades to learn every inch of Erebor. You would never leave it alive.”

“We’ll take him down first.”

The elf makes an impatient noise. “It is not _possible_.”

“But we’ll do it,” Blue swears. “Think about it. Leave Smaug alone, let him hide away in his horde, and eventually he will come out. Tomorrow, ten years from now, a hundred, he _will_ come out and the first place he’ll attack—”

“—will be Lake-town,” the elf says, but there’s a flicker of anger around her mouth.

“Yes, Lake-town first, people who have never hurt Smaug, who only tried to defend themselves against him—and then he’ll go after the Greenwood next.”

The elf stands, sharply, and turns her back on Blue. “You presume too much.”

“He’s a _dragon._ He lives for gold, and fire, and death. The halls of Mirkwood might be poorer than they were centuries ago, but there are still treasures here, and Smaug would tear you apart to get to them.”

The she-elf twitches again. She drums her fingers against her hips. Then she wheels back around. She’s all fox, now, head lifted, on the hunt. “What would you have me do, dwarf-friend?”

“Leave the dragon unmolested, and the whole of Mirkwood may burn,” says Blue. “Let us complete our mission, let us destroy the beast, and I swear to you the dwarves of Erebor will not disgrace your forest halls again so long as I live.”

“You cannot keep such a promise.”

“They owe me their lives more than once. They won’t ignore me in this.”

She makes an impatient noise. “But what of Thorin Oakenshield? He will mislike hearing you treat with me, thus.”

“He doesn’t have to know.” Blue leans forward. “I’d tell him that I found our own way out. I’d tell him anything. I’d not tell him of you.”

“Why not?”

“Well—because you helped me when you didn’t have to. Because—” _because you were kind._ “Because I’ve seen you with the dwarves. You don’t swear at them like the other guards do. You talk with them. You’re—you’re polite, and you were kind to me, and I’d not betray that. It’d be very rude.”

The she-elf’s mouth quirks again, just a little. “I see. But I still cannot help you. It would be betraying the vows of my position, the bonds of loyalty that hold me to my king. I should not have let you speak.”

Blue wilts. She closes her eyes and fights back tears. _So close. So very close._ “I can’t find him,” she blurts. “Thorin. I don’t know where he is. I keep following people but I can’t find him. I can’t leave without him.”

The she-elf says nothing for a long moment. Then, tentatively, she sets a hand to Blue’s shoulder. She’s so much _bigger_ than Blue, but she’s not much bigger at all, and Blue leans into the touch desperately. These are things she can’t say to Kíli, or to any of them. Things she can’t dare voice anywhere else. “If I can’t find him then it’ll all be for nothing. This is Thorin’s quest, not mine, not any of the rest of us. And Fíli’s too young to take over, he’s only—well, I don’t even know how old he is, but he’s certainly too young to be a leader, not like that, and if I can’t find Thorin then we’ll all never be free, and Erebor will never be retaken, and they’ll never have their home back, and I can’t, I _can’t—_ ”

She’s crying before she realizes. Blue hiccups, and swipes her nose with the cuff of her sleeve. She’d be horrified to do it, back in Hobbiton. Now she doesn’t even care. The elf strokes her hair, gently, and then settles beside her on the cot. Then, as un-self-consciously as a child, she hooks one arm around Blue’s shoulder and draws her into her side, murmuring in Sindarin. It sounds something like a lullaby. Blue screws up her face and hides it in the she-elf’s tunic, gasping and shaking. Thorin, and the cells, and the ring, and Kíli, and the spiders, and everything, it’s all crashing down, and she can’t, she _can’t_ —

“ _Îdh_ ,” she says. _Peace_. “ _Îdh_ , small one. Breathe and be well. You are safe, here.”

 _But I’m not_ , Blue wants to say. Something in her cackles at the lie. She _is_ safe here, and she’s not certain what makes her so convinced of it, but she knows it down to her bones. She’s safe in this room, with this elf, in the dark. She cries until she’s done, and then she wipes her nose again, and pulls back a little. The elf lets her slide away, but her long-fingered archer’s hand lingers on Blue’s wrist.

“I’m sorry,” says Blue, thickly. “I haven’t—I don’t do that to people. Generally.”

“You have borne much in the name of friendship,” says the elf. “Besides: it was a small price to pay, for such a story from such a storyteller.”

Blue huffs out a laugh, and they sit in silence for a while, each wrapped in their own thoughts.

“I cannot tell you where Thorin Oakenshield is bound,” says the elf-maid, looking away from her. “I cannot tell you that there is a side-passage outside of His Highness’ reception hall that leads to a three-tongued fork.”

Blue looks up, and frowns. “What?”

“I cannot tell you that if you follow this middle fork you will find a locked gate, guarded by three elves,” says the she-elf, smiling a little and staring at the wall. “I cannot tell you that if you pass this gate, and take the right-hand passage, you will be taking a staircase down into the dark, where only the most secret of prisoners are kept. I cannot tell you that there is only one occupied cell. I cannot say any of this, for to do so would be to betray my vows.”

“Oh,” breathes Blue. “What else can’t you tell me?”

The she-elf cocks her head. “I wonder what the wind is whispering.”

Blue shuts up.

“I cannot tell you that in three days’ time the elves of the Woodland Realm will be celebrating the Feast of Starlight,” she says, “and that the guards are often discharged for three hours that night only, to join in with the rest of the court in our worship of the stars. Nor can I say anything about the barrels at the base of the cell block, which await a journey down the river to Lake-town. I cannot say any of this to anyone, but I see no problem in telling the wind. _”_

“The wind thanks you,” says Blue.

“The wind ought to sleep,” rejoins the she-elf, and finally meets Blue’s eyes again. “The wind has had a very long time without it.”

“The wind ought to go.”

“The wind will sleep,” says the elf. “If only for an hour. And I will stand watch over it, to make certain it is not discovered.”

Blue almost bursts into tears again. “Why would you do such a thing? For the wind, I mean.”

The elf shrugs a little. “A good story. And the wind does, on occasion, speak a great deal of sense.”

“As do elves,” Blue says finally, and then starts to crawl off the cot. The elf catches her shoulder again, and shakes her head.

“I do not sleep much. You may use it.”

“But it’s yours.”

“But you have slept on stone these past weeks, whereas I have had the cot for many years longer than you have been alive. You will use it.”

Blue opens her mouth, closes it again, and then nods.

“What is your name?” the elf asks suddenly, as Blue settles herself against the pillows, still hungry, still sleepy, but suddenly whole again. “You never mentioned that.”

“Nor did you,” says Blue, and the elf, surprisingly, ducks her head as if in shame.

“I am Tauriel,” she says. “Tauriel of the Woodland Realm.”

“My name is Bluebell Baggins of the Shire,” says Blue, and she sticks out her hand. Tauriel looks at it, and then at her, before reaching out with both hands and clasping Blue’s hand to shake it. “We have a bargain?”

“We do,” says Tauriel, and Blue nods once before settling down to sleep. She’ll wake from nightmares quickly, she knows, but a real bed and loose hair is too much for her to resist now. Besides—when she does wake, she’ll put on her ring and sneak away, and if she’s lucky, the Feast of Starlight will give her all the chances she’ll need.

She thinks she feels someone touch her hair before she falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, because I forgot to mention it: Tauriel combing Blue's hair is a Big Thing in elvish culture. Tauriel, conveniently, does not mention this, because Tauriel is a scheming little minx. 
> 
> Blue figures it out later and turns a very interesting shade of red.


End file.
